You can “know” because we have decades of polling and election outcomes.
It’s not black and white “know”, 70% is the mean of a probability distribution.
It’s more accurate to say, this model predicts “Foo” because historically polls like this favor Foo 70% of the time. But these are probabilities and have wide errors. It’s on the reader to have a level of statistical knowledge.
These are more handicaps than “predictions”. The same way we predict whether it might rain tomorrow, who might wins tomorrows game, without a Time Machine.
jstanley|5 months ago
My model says there's a 70% chance of Foo, and that is actually accurate. How do you know it's accurate? Because my model said so.
It might have been accurate! 30% probability events happen 3 times out of 10. We just have no way to know if it truly was accurate.
softwaredoug|5 months ago
It’s not black and white “know”, 70% is the mean of a probability distribution.
It’s more accurate to say, this model predicts “Foo” because historically polls like this favor Foo 70% of the time. But these are probabilities and have wide errors. It’s on the reader to have a level of statistical knowledge.
These are more handicaps than “predictions”. The same way we predict whether it might rain tomorrow, who might wins tomorrows game, without a Time Machine.